Books

If you can't find a specific book or a book on an SSR-related topic that you are interested in, you can use the second search box to search the Google Books online library. If you find any books in the Google Books library that you think would be of interest to the Community of Practice, just click the checkbox below the book image and then click the import button after the search box. It takes a moment to import each book so we don't recommend importing more than ten books at a time.

This book highlights the role played by public finance in the delivery of security and criminal justice services. It seeks to strengthen policy and operational dialogue on security sector issues by providing national and international stakeholders with key information on security expenditure policy and management. The interplay between security, justice, and public finance is still a relatively unexplored area of development. Security and criminal justice are fundamental public goods provided by governments, and they often have significant claims on national budgets. Informed discussions on security sector expenditure policy and management are an essential part of the national budget cycle, through which central finance agencies fulfill their function of contesting sector expenditure proposals in the planning and budgeting process. Integrating the public finance perspective into broader security policy deliberations can significantly help defense, interior, and justice ministries and agencies address effectiveness and efficiency challenges arising in the provision of services in these sectors. Dialogue on security expenditure policy also strengthens international partners’ engagement on security issues, helping them make informed decisions regarding the appropriate level and form of external assistance. This book offers a framework for analyzing public financial management, financial transparency, and oversight, as well as expenditure policy issues that determine how to most appropriately manage security and justice services. It also provides advice on entry points for integrating expenditure analysis into security sector and broader governance reform processes. The book is the result of a project undertaken jointly by staff from the World Bank and the United Nations, integrating the disciplines where each institution holds a comparative advantage and a core mandate. The primary audience includes high-level, technically oriented government officials bearing both security as well as financial responsibilities, staff of international organizations working on public expenditure management and security sector issues, and development practitioners working in an advisory capacity.

As the primary agency for law enforcement, the police operates at close proximity to the public and exerts significant influence over the security of individuals and communities through its behaviours and performance. Therefore, ensuring accountability of both the individuals and institutions of the police is a fundamental condition for good governance of the security sector in democratic societies. The parliament, as the highest representative body in a democratic system, plays a significant role in maintaining police accountability.
The objective of the edited volume on “The Role of Parliament in Police Governance: Lessons Learned from Asia and Europe” is to put forward good practices and recommendations for improving police accountability, with an emphasis on the strengthening of the role of parliament in police governance. The comparative analysis includes insights and lessons learned from eight country case studies including Belgium, Germany, India, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Philippines, Thailand and the United Kingdom. The findings of the cases studies can be taken into account when analysing and considering options for improving the accountability of the police to parliament as well as strengthening independent oversight bodies and parliament-police liaison mechanisms. However, it must be emphasised that these good practices always need to be adapted to the exigencies of the local context.

This book examines the evolution, impact, and future prospects of the Security Sector Reform (SSR) model in conflict-affected countries in the context of the wider debate over the liberal peace project.

Since its emergence as a concept in the late 1990s, SSR has represented a paradigm shift in security assistance, from the realist, regime-centric, train-and-equip approach of the Cold War to a new liberal, holistic and people-centred model. The rapid rise of this model, however, belied its rather meagre impact on the ground. This book critically examines the concept and its record of achievement over the past two decades, putting it into the broader context of peace-building and state-building theory and practice. It focuses attention on the most common, celebrated and complex setting for SSR, conflict-affected environments, and comparatively examines the application and impacts of donor-supported SSR programing in a series of conflict-affected countries over the past two decades, including Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, East Timor and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The broader aim of the book is to better understand how the contemporary SSR model has coalesced over the past two decades and become mainstreamed in international development and security policy and practice. This provides a solid foundation to investigate the reasons for the poor performance of the model and to assess its prospects for the future.

This book will be of much interest to students of international security, peacebuilding, statebuilding, development studies and IR in general.

Recent developments such as Sweden's' Feminist Foreign Policy, the "Hillary Doctrine," and the integration of women into combat roles in the U.S. have propelled gender equality to the forefront of international politics. The UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, however, has been integrating gender equality into peacekeeping missions for nearly two decades as part of the women, peace and security agenda that has been most clearly articulated in UNSC Resolution 1325. To what extent have peacekeeping operations achieved gender equality in peacekeeping operations and been vehicles for promoting gender equality in post-conflict states?
While there have been major improvements related to women's participation and protection, there is still much left to be desired. Sabrina Karim and Kyle Beardsley argue that gender power imbalances between the sexes and among genders place restrictions on the participation of women in peacekeeping missions. Specifically, discrimination, a relegation of women to safe spaces, and sexual exploitation, abuse, harassment, and violence (SEAHV) continue to threaten progress on gender equality. Using unique cross-national data on sex-disaggregated participation of peacekeepers and on the allegations of SEAHV, as well as original data from the UN Mission in Liberia, the authors examine the origins and consequences of these challenges. Karim and Beardsley also identify and examine how increasing the representation of women in peacekeeping forces, and even more importantly through enhancing a more holistic value for "equal opportunity," can enable peacekeeping operations to overcome the challenges posed by power imbalances and be more of an example of and vehicle for gender equality globally.